Case Study: CivPol (Civic Police) Alumni Association

Business Challenge:

The CivPol Alumni Association's 1,400 members are American police professionals under contract with the U.S. State Department to establish and train post-conflict law enforcement in war zones such as Iraq,Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Bosnia.Many members of this two-year old organization have been killed or wounded in the line of duty, and CivPol Alumni's all-volunteer leadership has sought to devote its limited resources to gaining formal recognition for members' sacrifices, and supporting officers and their families before, during and after deployment. These efforts require CivPol to spend less on mundane operation functions and to devote more resources to serving members and their families. With no-full time staff to perform routine membership management tasks, CivPol Alumni Association turned to Wild Apricot for help.

Results:

When CivPol President Mike Cox contacted Wild Apricot in 2008, Coxwas managing all organization and communication tasks for members and he was doing it all manually. CivPol has no paid staff members and the three volunteer board members (including Cox) are police professionals with full time jobs. With Wild Apricot's platform in place for a year,Cox has eliminated the tedious copying/pasting from multiple software programs and he estimates saving at least $10,000 by not having to hire any part time staff to manage the organization.

Solution Details:

"It was a mess." That's how Mike Cox described the attempts to manually manage the database, email communications, membership registration, payment processing and services of the CivPol Alumni Association. "I had to sift through our books to track expired memberships; our email blasts were often lost in spam filters," said Cox. "Implementing Wild Apricot's software resolved everything. Plus, I can manage CivPol without any staff. It's pretty well automated so our volunteer team leadership can do it ourselves," he added.

For a flat monthly fee, Wild Apricot's automated system now processes membership payments, tracks and processes registrations,maintains the web site and blog and updates the event calendar. Cox said his organization also enjoys a few unexpected bonuses, thanks to the flexibility of the membership management platform.

"We had no way to do ongoing fundraising. Now anyone can click on our website's "Donate" button and in just nine months we've collected several thousands of dollars in ecommerce transactions. It's literally a new revenue source," said Cox.

The new fundraising dollars, and the savings that come from not having to invest in expensive software and IT has made it possible for Cox to devote resources to programs addressing CivPol Alumni members' unique needs.

"These are officers who go into war zones during or after a conflict and they train local residents to become local police. Many of our members suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome and need assistance when they return home. We can now offer them programs and direct them to avenues for guidance and treatment." CivPol is also campaigning to Congress to recognize their members who have been killed in the line of duty.

"We're using Wild Apricot's platform to encourage our web visitors to write letters asking Congress to recognize civilian police killed in the line of duty on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington,D.C.This campaign is dear to our hearts and I'm so glad that Wild Apricot has given us the tool to easily publicize it," Cox added.